More than ten years ago, in Europe the headlines of relevant media outlets were filled by a group of countries labeled with the insulting, humiliating, mocking and malicious acronym PIGS (English: pigs) - it consisted, namely, of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (Spain). At the time, those countries were struggling hard to prove to the suspicious rest of the so-called developed world that their creditworthiness could be trusted, all in conditions in which the name PIGS had very much taken hold, writes Jutarnji list.

However, as Financial Times now assesses in its analysis, it was a phrase that in itself sounded harmless given the root of its origin - what actually hurt was how those countries were really perceived, and they were perceived as the ‘periphery‘.

For millennia, the Mediterranean world viewed most of what was happening north of the Alps from its position as something secondary and incidental, and it was certainly very painful when that paradigm was reversed and when suddenly, instead of the north, the south of Europe found itself in a position where it had to be humble.

But now a kind of Mediterranean revenge is underway. In 2024, according to The Economist, Spain was the most successful rich country in the world. At the end of last year, Greece was borrowing just as cheaply as France, and foreign delegations are now tugging at the sleeves of the political elite in Athens in order to get at least some hint of a solution for implementing painful and fruitful reforms. Portugal, meanwhile, has been growing faster than Germany ever since before the pandemic.

The shift of power to the south

Economic figures will, of course, change and fluctuate up and down, but what will not change, according to author Janan Ganesh, is the gradual shift of political power toward the south of the European continent. For example, the only European leader who attended the inauguration of Donald Trump was Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. But there is something more to it than, as the author states, the opportunism of one woman or the fact that Great Britain, France and Germany are currently led by faltering leaders.

After Brexit, space naturally opened up for another large country to establish itself as a factor in the European Union, and among the obvious candidates - Poland, Spain and Italy - two are Mediterranean countries.

Even the biggest problem facing southern Europe - its exposure to unregulated illegal migration across the Mediterranean Sea - is a kind of trump card. Namely, the rest of the continent will have to encourage the country not to be lenient toward those people traveling further north - the EU, incidentally, already has an agreement with Turkey in that regard.

The continent’s southern border now has a strategic value and importance that was hard to imagine at the time of the EU’s founding, and given birth rates in Africa compared with those in Europe, as well as periodic chaos in the Sahel, that strategic importance and the advantages it brings will only grow, not diminish.

But even that does not reach the very root of the Mediterranean’s growing influence. On a continent that is aging rapidly and recording weak economic growth, the ‘trick‘ lies in breaking into parts of the world with stronger dynamism. Therefore, it matters which countries you are historically and linguistically connected to. Madrid is now rivaling Miami as a place where capital also feels at home, and the situation is similar with Spanish-speaking talent from Latin America. It remains to be seen whether Lisbon has the potential to function as a similar link for Brazilians, but the fundamental linguistic connection is there.

At the same time, the north of the European Union, with its accidental historical rise, looks less and less like the world that is coming. On the global horizon there is no superpower where French, Dutch or German is spoken. Spanish, for example, has overtaken French as the most studied language at A-level in Great Britain, and especially globally.

So much for the periphery

When Marco Polo arrived in China, he described it, the author states, as two worlds. Such, namely, was the difference between the north and the south. In India, the situation with the languages spoken, the incomes earned and the options the castes vote for changes profoundly as one travels across the fertile Northern Plain toward the south. Americans fought a civil war along more or less the same latitude.

Every large populated area, for example Nigeria, is prone to a north-south divide, which often has its roots in decisive factors such as average temperature and crop yield. Europe, meanwhile, as Ganesh states, is small, and since almost the entire continent is rich, compact, and most of the population are Christians, by world standards, the author states, it could be considered a single country.

But that certainly made the former northern humility before the south even more painful, and it is still so now. British elites fear that their country will "become Italy," as if no worse fate could befall a nation. But now the laconic generalized theories about the south being incapable of reform, a beautiful place only for a country weekend house and nothing else, look very strange and outdated.

And while the economic gains since 2010 are being exaggerated, the strategic trends strengthening the Mediterranean may go unnoticed, but the future of the European continent will to a large extent be decided and shaped south of the 45th parallel, just as its distant past was. So much for the Mediterranean as a periphery, Janan Ganesh concludes in Financial Times.

Source: Slobodna Dalmacija